


Burn, Baby, Burn

by gogollescent



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 01:51:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bashir and Garak get stuck in Garak's quarters, and are forced to conserve body heat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn, Baby, Burn

**Author's Note:**

> This is why AO3 shouldn't require works to have titles.

Two weeks after the implant had been turned off, Dr. Bashir was still finding excuses to stop by his quarters. Garak would have been more irritated by this had a visitor from the Gamma Quadrant not chosen the duration of one of Bashir's little house calls as the perfect window for a technological take-over of the station: beginning with the infirmary and culminating in a full lockdown of the habitation rings. The wonderful thing about the Gamma Quadrant was its endless supply of malevolent short-term planners.  

“Just think,” said Garak. “If only you’d taken a shorter lunch break and not gone to harry convalescing small businessmen, you might have been able to stop it.”

“Stop what?” said Bashir, frowning at the forcefield. He’d rebounded off it twice already; Garak was starting to think the doctor had his own pain-suppression device, or at least a genetic inability to learn from his mistakes. “We don’t even know what’s doing this! Except it told us to ‘stay chill’ and ‘have a very nice day!’”

“And your Nurse Ranoa saw someone entering your office moments before the lockdown,” Garak said. “It seems to me, Doctor, that you’ve failed in your duty as a Starfleet officer, assigned to protect this station from the mysterious alien forces that assault it weekly.”

“This is no time for jokes,” said Bashir severely. Then he grinned. “More like twice monthly, isn’t it?”

“True,” said Garak, thinking of Tain. “As I understand it, sometimes you go to them.”

“Yes, well, I don’t see your leukocytes complaining,” said Bashir. Then he sighed. “You’re sure you can’t sort of… tinker us out?”

“I could try,” said Garak. “But I’m not sure I want to attract our custodian’s attention. After all, it’s not as if they’ve made any actual threats. Who knows? Perhaps they just don’t want to deal with the mid-day crush while they’re experiencing the architecture.”

Bashir gave him a look. “No one wants to experience the architecture. People who live here do everything they can not to experience the architecture. Odo says he’s thinking of letting people put up advertisements on the Promenade, just to hide the bulkheads.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“You’re right. Actually he said he was going to pin up lists of station regulations on every uncovered surface.”

“I never knew that the Constable had such an exacting sense of aesthetics.”

“You know Odo—full of surprises. Will you at least try to get access to the comm system?”

“Frankly,” said Garak, “I think we’ll have better luck with the door.”

As it turned out, even removing the control panel elicited another stern warning from their new overseer. “Stay chill,” said the flat, nasal voice on the line, and the wires began, uninvitingly, to spark.

There was a silence. Then: “Did it just get colder in here?”

“Um,” said Bashir.

“Doctor,” said Garak dangerously, “please tell me that what we have here is not a confusion of idiom.”

But over the next half hour it became clear that the injunction had been literal. Garak, teeth chattering, took to the control panel in earnest, but to no more success than, at one point, setting his sleeve on fire. “Maybe I should have left it,” he said, after he and Bashir had extinguished the stitching. “At least it would have been warm.”

“Don’t be absurd,” said Bashir. He was running a dermal regenerator over the smooth, burnt skin of Garak’s wrist. Charred scales flecked off the healed areas. “I’ve put far too much work into your health to let you fry yourself.”

“Only trying to lighten the mood,” said Garak. He sank a little deeper into his sofa. Bashir took the opportunity to check his temperature. He still hadn’t let go of Garak’s hand. “You’re cooling fast,” he said, sounding more irritable than concerned. He addressed the air, as he had done already several times: “What is it you want? To induce targeted hypothermia?”

There were no more announcements over the comm system. Bashir muttered something inaudible to Cardassian hearing and let go of Garak’s arm, his fingerprints burning for a moment after the separation, like islands of heat when Garak closed his eyes. He opened them again in a little while—longer than he’d meant to be blind for.

“We may actually want to set that fire,” said Bashir, looking critically at the room’s unencouraging contents. When he breathed out, Garak could see it: vapor curling draconic from his lips.

“I’m not eager to begin burning my possessions just yet,” said Garak. “You didn’t bring anything in your medkit that you could inject me with? Some chemical heatpacks, at least?”

“The kit was really more of a… a formality,” said Bashir, and either didn’t notice or didn’t deign to acknowledge Garak’s triumphant smile. “It’s just me and the—”

He paused.

“Oh, no,” said Garak. He moved to get up. Bashir was faster; a blur, and then he had caged Garak in his seat by resting one hand on the arm of the sofa and one hand on the back. “It’ll be fine,” he said impatiently, his face so huge and close that Garak had a dizzying impression of descent—as though he were falling from a great height towards some insufferably smug planet’s surface. He pushed his head a little farther back into its cushion. “It’s not as though we’re accomplishing anything here. Sisko and Dax were out in the  _Rio Grande_ , they’ll be the ones to take back control if anyone does. We can take a nap. It’s sound emergency practice. If I let you get hypothermia, I’d have to do it anyway.” 

“Nap?”

Bashir ignored him. “This is just cutting out the painful middleman. If we’re lucky.”

“While I’m sure I appreciate your generous intentions,” said Garak, “it’s undignified and unnecessary. And a little presumptuous, if I may add. That fire—”

“The thermostat’s dropped thirty degrees,” Bashir pointed out. “It’s still dropping. I’m extremely cold, speaking as the representative mammal. I think we’ve missed our chance with the wires anyway—they’ve stopped sparking, now they’re just dead.”

“Obviously that engineering module was a great success,” said Garak. He narrowed his eyes. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to sit on me.”

“No, no,” said Bashir, releasing his grip on Garak’s innocent furniture. “Just didn’t want you blockading yourself in the bathroom because I suggested we huddle for warmth.”

“I hope I would never do anything so rash.”

Bashir glanced at the place where, two weeks ago, Garak had upended a table on him. Garak followed his gaze, and mutely raised his eyebrows. Bashir sighed. The lights, at least, had been left as low as Garak liked them, and the doctor was a dim figure leaning over him, his warmth more forceful than the flat gleam of nebulae in his eyes. He had moved on to looking out the porthole at Garak’s back. Garak was aware of sloth overtaking him, an enormous weariness no less convincing for the fact that it tapped away his energy without tiring his brain: the sort of liver-deep ache that could, nonetheless, keep you up all night. He hadn’t slept properly since the implant. The dreams were unexceptional—none of the hunger that might have seized him if he’d chosen a more traditional palliative, kanar or opiates, but a low throbbing memory of cold submerged. Winter in the capital, locked out of his father's garden by good glass. The chill that was now unpreventably drenching his doctor-epiphytic heart. It made him think of reaching for Bashir’s phaser, or the satisfying crash of the table, but all violence was at present beyond his means and in a few minutes he might be thinking of nothing at all.

He was not in any case very offended by this slice of Bashir’s pity. It was more human than personal. He  _was_  surprised Bashir had so quickly accepted the circumstances of captivity—however temporary and soon to be resolved. And possibly the result of a botched translation. But then, the doctor required nothing more than somebody to salvage, when it came to his own happiness.

Bashir seemed to sense his diminishing resistance. He went without being told to retrieve a couple of blankets from the bedroom, then flopped down next to Garak on the couch, his long body occupying the remaining area with totality. There was a beat in which he must have suppressed his own qualms, and then he took Garak’s hands between his, pressing down on the numb fingers, the streak of new skin, and yanked Garak over so that they were awkwardly slouched across the length of the sofa: Garak’s head roughly level with his chest. Garak, disconcerted, tried to pull himself up but found his arms were hardly equal to the task, so that he ended instead with his face tucked in Bashir’s shoulder and Bashir’s gangling arms wrapped around his ribcage, the both of them enmeshed in microfleece. He could feel Bashir’s chest rise and fall near the slant of his own neck—Bashir’s heartbeat drummed all too close to the pulse under his jaw.

“Suppose we both freeze to death,” he said.

Bashir’s laughter made his chin bump Garak's temple. He was enjoying himself, Garak thought resentfully. This wasn’t the kind of entertainment he’d been banking on when they’d heard that the station had been infiltrated. He’d been looking forward to someone swapping bodies, say, or a little light mutiny. Not the silence of two men who, in the absence of an escape route, were solving their problems by cuddling.

“The regulation blankets are excellent insulators,” Bashir said. “And it’s not that frosty in here yet. Really, it’s one of the more comfortable crises I’ve been in, even if I’m not usually this useless. If you weren’t Cardassian…”

“Yes, well,” said Garak. 


End file.
